Talk:Edward E. Baptist

This article must adhere to the biographies of living persons (BLP) policy, even if it is not a biography, because it contains material about living persons. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted, or if you have other concerns, please report the issue to this noticeboard.

If you are a subject of this article, or acting on behalf of one, and you need help, please see this help page.

Biography: Science and Academia

	Biography portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
	This article is supported by the science and academia work group (assessed as Low-importance).
	An editor has requested that an image or photograph be added to this article.

Literature Low‑importance

	Literature portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Literature, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Literature on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LiteratureWikipedia:WikiProject LiteratureTemplate:WikiProject LiteratureLiterature
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

New York (state) Low‑importance

	New York (state) portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject New York (state), a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of New York on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.New York (state)Wikipedia:WikiProject New York (state)Template:WikiProject New York (state)New York (state)
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

United States: North Carolina Low‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	North Carolina portal This article is supported by WikiProject North Carolina (assessed as Low-importance).

It is requested that an image or photograph of Edward E. Baptist be included in this article to improve its quality. Please replace this template with a more specific media request template where possible.
The Free Image Search Tool or Openverse Creative Commons Search may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites.

Upload

Deletion of content critical of the 'Half Has Never Been Told'

The following text was deleted:

A number of economic historians have been critical of The Half Has Never Been Told.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]

There is absolutely no reason for deleting the text. It is accurate and the sources cited are all high-quality reliable academic sources. It's one goddamn sentence. The text doesn't even get into the ridiculous errors that Baptist makes in the book. If other editors believe that there are positive reviews out there, go ahead and add those. Don't delete reliably sourced content and demand that other editors do the work that you are too lazy to do yourself. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 22:24, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ pseudoerasmus (2015-11-05). "The Baptist Question Redux: Emancipation & Cotton Productivity". pseudoerasmus. Retrieved 2017-06-07.
^ Burnard, Trevor (2015-01-02). "'The Righteous Will Shine Like the Sun': Writing an Evocative History of Antebellum American Slavery". Slavery & Abolition. 36 (1): 180–185. doi:10.1080/0144039X.2015.1009239. ISSN 0144-039X.
^ Clegg, John J. (2015). "Capitalism and Slavery". Critical Historical Studies. 2 (2): 281–304. doi:10.1086/683036.
^ pseudoerasmus (2014-09-12). "Baptism by Blood Cotton". pseudoerasmus. Retrieved 2017-06-07.
^ Murray, John E.; Olmstead, Alan L.; Logan, Trevon D.; Pritchett, Jonathan B.; Rousseau, Peter L. (2015/09). "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. By Baptist Edward E. . New York: Basic Books, 2014. Pp. xxvii, 498. $35.00, cloth". The Journal of Economic History. 75 (3): 919–931. doi:10.1017/S0022050715000996. ISSN 0022-0507. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
^ pseudoerasmus (2014-11-10). "Was slavery necessary for the Industrial Revolution ?". pseudoerasmus. Retrieved 2017-06-07.
^ pseudoerasmus (2014-09-12). "Baptism by Blood Cotton". pseudoerasmus. Retrieved 2017-06-07.
^ Engerman, Stanley L. (2017/6). "Review of The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 by Calvin Schermerhorn and The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist". Journal of Economic Literature. 55 (2): 637–643. doi:10.1257/jel.20151334. ISSN 0022-0515. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

You should review WP:BLPSTYLE and you will see why your additions are problematic for a BLP. Undue weight is given to cherry-picked negative reviews of the book (even though more positive or neutral reviews are readily available online, for example, these in The New York Times The Los Angeles Times and The Journal of American history). Adding 8 citations after "one goddamn sentence" is excessive; at least half of those are from the same economics blog. This appears to aggressive POV-pushing to me, which is a big no-no on BLP articles. Before any review section for his book is added to the article (and it would honestly be more appropriate for a wiki article on the book itself, not Baptist's wiki article) a drafted version should be posted here to make sure it is balanced and meets the criteria of a BLP.--C.J. Griffin (talk) 23:07, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Add those reviews to the article. Don't ask me to do your work for you. By the way, Foner and Berry are not economic historians, and Tobar is a journalist, so they don't negate anything that I added or show that I slanted the sentence on where Baptist's stands among economic historians. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:15, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is not the responsibility of either myself or other editors on Wikipedia to balance your blatant POV-pushing by adding opposing viewpoints, it is YOUR responsibility to not add such biased material to a BLP in the first place! If you had read the policy I linked above, you would know this. Let me quote the portion relevant to this discussion: "The idea expressed in Wikipedia:Eventualism—that every Wikipedia article is a work in progress, and that it is therefore okay for an article to be temporarily unbalanced because it will eventually be brought into shape—does not apply to biographies. Given their potential impact on biography subjects' lives, biographies must be fair to their subjects at all times."--C.J. Griffin (talk) 00:10, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing unbalanced about the content I added. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 01:02, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth pointing out that full four of the sources Snooganssnoogans has cited are not only from a single blog, but that blog is not particularly notable. (I.e., not the blog of a widely-cited authority writing under his own name, and/or in connection with a notable institution.)

That Baptist's book has attracted debunkers is historical fact. (Let's face it; in our day any statement of any perspective immediately touches off a torrent of ego-driven naysaying. And The Half Has Never Been Told is explosive material.) However, not all criticism is equal. WP's policy and culture have been to defer to considered, balanced critics, moderated by institutional control. The fact that "pseudoerasmus" writes independently doesn't mean his analysis is unreliable, but it does mean that reliability can't be quantified. And that's why he can't be cited to back up a contention here.

The statement in the current article, "The Half Has Never Been Told received mixed reviews from academics", is not accurate. The book has been overwhelmingly accepted by the academic consensus, with some typical correctives on the margins. Those correctives are a necessary part of academia, and worthy of mention here. But to characterise the formal reception of this work as "mixed" is disingenuous at best. That suggests Baptist's fellow scholars are about half and half on his theses, and that is frankly a lie. Laodah 18:01, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It has not been overwhelmingly accepted by academics. Reviews by historians are generally positive. Reviews by economic historians are extremely negative, to the point of accusing Baptist of not understanding basic economic concepts, cherry-picking evidence, and even inventing ideas with no evidence (Olmstead alleges that the "pushing system" in the South is an invention). I've updated the description of the reception to make this divergence in responses clear, and to explain some of the economic historians' objections. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:50, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

[1] seudoerasmus (2015-11-05). "The Baptist Question Redux: Emancipation & Cotton Productivity". pseudoerasmus. Retrieved 2017-06-07.

[2] Burnard, Trevor (2015-01-02). "'The Righteous Will Shine Like the Sun': Writing an Evocative History of Antebellum American Slavery". Slavery & Abolition. 36 (1): 180–185. doi:10.1080/0144039X.2015.1009239. ISSN 0144-039X.

[3] Clegg, John J. (2015). "Capitalism and Slavery". Critical Historical Studies. 2 (2): 281–304. doi:10.1086/683036.

[4] seudoerasmus (2014-09-12). "Baptism by Blood Cotton". pseudoerasmus. Retrieved 2017-06-07.

[5] Murray, John E.; Olmstead, Alan L.; Logan, Trevon D.; Pritchett, Jonathan B.; Rousseau, Peter L. (2015/09). "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. By Baptist Edward E. . New York: Basic Books, 2014. Pp. xxvii, 498. $35.00, cloth". The Journal of Economic History. 75 (3): 919–931. doi:10.1017/S0022050715000996. ISSN 0022-0507. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

[6] seudoerasmus (2014-11-10). "Was slavery necessary for the Industrial Revolution ?". pseudoerasmus. Retrieved 2017-06-07.

[7] seudoerasmus (2014-09-12). "Baptism by Blood Cotton". pseudoerasmus. Retrieved 2017-06-07.

[8] Engerman, Stanley L. (2017/6). "Review of The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815–1860 by Calvin Schermerhorn and The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist". Journal of Economic Literature. 55 (2): 637–643. doi:10.1257/jel.20151334. ISSN 0022-0515. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]